Enclosure in Athens despatch No. 649 of August 20th, 1923.

NOTES ON A TOUR MADE BY THE MIXED COMMISSION ON GRECOBULGARIAN EMIGRATION IN WESTERN AND CENTRAL MACEDONIA by Colonel A.C.CORFE.

A Delegation of the above Commission commenced an extensive tour of Western and Central Macedonia on July 1st 1923. The Delegation consisted of Lieutenant-Colonel A. C. Corfe, Delegate of the League of Nations and President of the Commission, Mr. Vladimir Robeff, Delegate of the Bulgarian Government to the Commission, and Major J. A. Saunders, O.B.E., President of the Commission's Sub-Commission in Greece.

The object of the tour was:-

• 1) to ascertain how the Regulations drawn up by the Mixed Commission (and promulgated by law by the Greek and Bulgarian Governments) were being put into force in Macedonia;

• 2) to ascertain how far the Bulgarian-speaking population in Macedonia was aware of its rights and privileges under these Regulations.

Particular attention was to be paid to the observance of a clause of Article 10 of the Regulations, which enacts that –

“No pressure, direct or indirect, may be brought to bear by anyone to prevent a person belonging to the Greek minority in Bulgaria or the Bulgarian minority in Greece from emigrating, if he wishes to do so, nor to induce such person to emigrate, if he does not wish to. The Mixed Commission and the Sub-Commissions and the other representatives of the Mixed Commission will protect the free and voluntary exercise of the right of emigration.”

Western Macedonia.

Over thirty Bulgarian-speaking villages, many of them in remote districts in the mountains, were visited in Western Macedonia.

Deportation of Families of Persons Evading Military Service.

In virtue of Article 10 of the regulations quoted above the Mixed Commission had insisted early in June that the Greek Government should not apply the law for the deportation of the families of persons evading military service to Bulgarian-speaking families in Macedonia whose members of military age were in Bulgaria; seeing that the Greek Government does not allow refugees from Macedonia to return.